CIS Faculty Changes

As many of you already know, Drs. Rettenmayer and Johnston have left the CIS@ULM family to pursue opportunities elsewhere.  We wish them good luck in their new endeavors.  On the down side, this represented 50% of the CIS faculty.  Fortunately, Dr. Berry was able to secure funding for us to hire a visiting professor to help cover our current load of CIS offerings for the Fall 2007 semester.  Please join Dr. Wood and I in welcoming Ms. Natalie Campbell.  Ms. Campbell is joining us from the Graduate Studies and Research Office and is completing her doctorate at Mississippi State University in Information Systems.

This change in the CIS faculty will have a number of significant impacts on the program.  The most pressing issue is that we have had to rearrange the instructors for several classes.  You should be prepared for some new faces and some old faces you weren’t expecting for that first day of class.  Ms. Campbell will be teaching CINS306, 344, and 350.  Dr. Wood will be teaching CINS 302 (the follow-on to CINS 220), and just when you thought you were safe…I’m on deck for CINS 430.   I’ve had requests for the textbooks for these reassigned courses, so I’ve listed them below.

CINS 306
*ISBN:  0619212841
*Title: Oracle 9i:sql W/intro.to Pl/sql-w/cd
*Author:  Morris-murphy
*Publisher: THOMSON
*Copyright: 2003

*ISBN: 0201752847
*Title:Database Design For Mere Mortals-w/cd
*Author:Hernandez
*Publisher:PEARSON
*Copyright:2003
*Edition:2ND

CINS 302
*ISBN:  0321393999
*Title:Starting Out W/visual Basic 2005-w/2cds
*Author:Gaddis
*Publisher:PEARSON
*Copyright:2007
*Edition:3RD

CINS 344
*ISBN:  0130384713
*Title:Corporate Computer Network Security
*Author:Panko
*Publisher:PEARSON
*Copyright:2004

As you may have noticed, we lost two faculty and gained one.  This means that going forward, we may not be able to offer such an extensive list of courses every semester.  Students in the CIS program are encouraged to “own” their program of work.  To help you, the CIS major or minor, own your program of work, I will be working on a multi-year listing of course offerings so that you can plan your course work out as you progress towards graduation.  Look for that document here and in the CIS program Facebook group.

Be sure to check back here or put this blog in your RSS feeds to get the latest information as things go forward.

Thats what I know, and now you know too.

Dr. Barnett, Faculty Chair, CS/CIS

Internship Program Presentation

CenturyTel will be presenting information on its internship program to CIS and CS majors on Wednesday at 6pm in the Airway Sciences Bldg.  Dr. Berry will be providing pizza.  ALL CIS majors/minors and faculty are encouraged to attend.  CenturyTel has expressed an interest in the development of an extensive internship program and in the establishment of advanced networking labs for our program.

Put this on your calendar and come hear about this exciting opportunity.

Thats what I know, and now you know too.

Dr. Barnett

CenturyTel Internships

Ever notice, that everyone seems to want experience when they’re hiring?  Ever wonder how you’re going to manage this feet while still in school, preparing to enter the job market?

INTERNSHIPS!!!  Taking an internship is the best way for you to find out about the workings of the IT field and to gain that much coveted experience that will separate you from all the other  new graduates after you walk across the stage at graduation.

CenturyTel will be interviewing for interns on 12 March 2007.  I’ve asked the internship program managers for information on what you’ll be doing and the qualifications that you’ll need.

Position Summary:      

     CenturyTel’s Intern Program is to provide high-potential students with exposure to CenturyTel’s corporate culture, management style, customer base and business systems.  The intern will not only fill specific workload needs, but will also have an opportunity to develop relationships with CenturyTel’s managers, thus giving managers a first-hand look at the intern’s skills, work ethic and potential for full-time employment. Students participating in CenturyTel’s 10-week Information Systems internship program will.

• Be paired with a mentor personally interested in their long-term success
• Participate in team-building and educational events
• Experience the “real world” operations of an enterprise information systems department, including work in at least one of the following areas:

• Application Administrator
• Application Development
• Application Support
• Client Support
• Data Center Management
• Data Warehouse/Database Administrator
• Disaster Recovery
• eCommerce Development
• eCommerce Support
• PC Support
• Quality Assurance
• Security
• System Administrator
• Web Development
• Web Services Development

Requirements:                                                                                                                                                                        

 

1. Must have a 3.0 GPA or above overall in CIS, Computer Science or related IS field.
2. Must have a Sophomore/Junior/Senior/Graduate classification.
3. Must be a U.S. citizen or have permanent residency status

 

Can you digg it?

Yes, it may look like a misspelling, but it’s not. Digg.com is a wildly popular site specializing in what’s called Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking has its roots in more traditional bookmarking that you probably already do with your browser. You find a site with an interesting tidbit or an interesting story at an online news site, you bookmark it or copy the link so you can revisit it and share it with your friends.

Digg.com and other social bookmarking sites take this one or two steps further. Social bookmarking sites store your bookmarks on the web. What does this mean to you? Well think about all the computers you interact with in the course of a day. Wouldn’t it be nice if all your bookmarks were in one place so you could use all your favorite sites and their services (without having to remember their individual addresses)? Social bookmarking allows you to do this and more.

The more part is that you can also share your bookmarks of interesting tidbits with other people. The site del.icio.us, allows social bookmarking by allowing you to store your links and then establish networks of other people’s links. As a student, you could bookmark your items, share them with group members, or even subscribe to your professor’s bookmarks. Want to know where your prof is coming from? Read what they read.

Digg.com takes this even further by allowing people to submit stories found on the web to a central site. The stories are tagged with keywords to facilitate searching. You can customize the content of your view of digg.com to feature stories on specialized topics, like technology, security, entertainment, etc. The digg.com homepage features the most popular stories submitted by users (as determined by the process of subscribers “digging” the stories). I personally use it to keep my internet news and content in one place and availible to students.

If you’d like to check out my online bookmarks at www.digg.com/users/drbarnett.

Well, thats all I know, and now you know too.

Dr. Barnett

Are You Managing Your Skill Set

Are you thinking about graduation, about getting a job? If you’re a senior in your last semester, the answer is probably yes (it had better be). However, it’s never too early to start thinking about what you’ll do after that fateful day off in the future when you walk across the stage and the Dean hands you your diploma. In the grand scheme of things, this four year period is only a small part of your life and career, you need to make the best of it.

So what are employers looking for? Recent research published in the IT press shows that employers want:

1. Well rounded technology skills. Good communications skills are a must for this field, but technical capability is equally important. Here’s a secret from the pro’s; after you learn your second programming language, the rest are pretty much the same. This holds true of most technology. Oracle SQL is pretty much like Microsoft SQL, which is pretty much like DB2 SQL on the mainframe. A good well rounded skill set (not just the ones you like) will help you outpace the competition.

2. Project Management Skills. CIS isn’t all about coding. Eventually, you’ll end up leading projects. Familiarity with the development life-cycle and quality control methods is critical. One of our recent graduates found herself in this position within months of starting her first job.

3. Critical Thinking. The explosion in data warehousing capabilities and the need to work closely with business means that you’ll be working closely with business elements to define requirements and provide answers.

“We are looking for people who can execute what you ask them to execute. We want them to have an opinion, speak up when they may not be going in the right direction, tell us to take a left here instead of a right to get there faster. Rote workers are not what we are looking for.”

Cited from McAdams, 2007

4. Security Sharpness. IT in the 21st Century must be ever vigilant to security threats. Security has become part and parcel to the systems trade.

You can read the entire article at Hottest Skills for 2007 at the Global Knowledge IT Training site. The article, which is reprinted from Computerworld also contains guidelines for interviewing. Click Here for Article

MSDNAA Information

The CS/CIS Area has a subscription that should become active in the next week or so.  This subscripion will allow students in the CS or CIS degree programs to download Microsoft development software for free. You purchase it at the department store front, but the cost is $0 unless you want to order disks.

You can access the store by clicking on the following link. MSDNAA Store Click Here

Here is some information on how the process works, from the beginning of the semester till you get your software.

Beginning of the semester:

1. I receive a list of the students. Specifically, I get a list of your email addresses.
2. I use this list to create the accounts for all CS/CIS area students.
3. Microsoft will email you with your login information. This will basically be your userid, which is the email address I got from your instructor, and a password. In the past, this email has tended to get caught by the spam filter, so remember to check you spam folders.  If it still slips by, don’t worry.    You can go to the site, enter your userid (email address from blackboard) and hit the “Forgot Password” option.  They will resend the welcome email to that address.

* Be sure to have an up-to-date email address in BlackBoard!!
Accessing the Store Front

When you login and you will be presented with the software packages that the faculty have selected to feature.  Basically, this is the stuff you need for class.  At present we have Windows XP SP2, MS Project 2003 Pro, MS Visual Studio 2003, SQLServer 2000 Developer edition, Visio 2003 Professional, and OneNote. I’ll be setting the store up to offer Visual Studio 2005 in the coming weeks.

Select the software package(s) you want. With selections made, go to the Checkout function.  You can choose from several delivery methods for the software. The download and burn in lab options are FREE.  You can also purchase disks for a nominal fee. If the package has an activation code, that code will appear on their receipt.

The download option doesn’t work as a delivery method. I’ve never met anyone that can get it to work on a broad scale. However, it doesn’t matter which of the free options you choose, the main thing is to have MS issue you an activation licence (that crazy 16 character code you get with software).

To get the actual software,  go to the Admin 3-50 lab with blank CD-R disks to burn copies. The machines against the far wall (East side of building) have copies of the disk images (.iso files) and you can burn copies of the software.

Simply logon to the machine, put your blank CD-R disk in the burner, and select the disk image from the MSDNAA folder on the C drive. When you double click on the .iso file, Roxio comes up and begins the burning process. Most applications take one disk, Visual Studio Pro takes 6 (Visual Studio 2005 takes 5).

At home, simply install the software like you would any other application they’ve ever inistalled.  Viola! You are now fully equiped to develop your projects.

Well, thats all I know, and now you know too.

Dr. Barnett

Scheduling Classes

The Spring 2007 semester is barely off the gound, and class schedules for Summer and Fall 2007 are already coming due. I thought that I’d give everyone a heads-up on the process. Nothing is official until it goes into the Official Schedule of Classes!!

The CIS area will be offering the standard fair of classes in Fall 2007, CINS306, 302, 350, 430. We are looking at offering two (2) electives: CINS344 Information System Security and CINS492 (letter to be determined) Special Topics. At the moment, we are thinking E-commerce for this special topics course.

The CIS area policy is to offer 2 electives in the Fall semester, and one in the Spring. We’ve been doing that and we will continue. Come Spring 2008, we will offer CINS 435. You will need to have completed CINS306, CINS 302 and CINS 430 to take this course. If you are going to need an elective in Spring 2008 to graduate, be sure to get those prerequisites out of the way.

CIS faculty will be telling you the same thing during advising.

Well that’s what I know, and now you know too.

Dr. Barnett

Open Source Software

With the semester starting back up, lots of you will be heading off to classes that will require word processors, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, and maybe the odd database. You may also find yourself wondering how you will be able to afford a copy of Microsoft Office for your home computer. With the budget cuts that came after Katrina and Rita, the ULM labs aren’t always open when you need to get at an office productivity suite. An alternative to MS Office that could help those of you that don’t have Office (not all computers come preloaded with it) is OpenOffice. OpenOffice is availible from OpenOffice.org.

OpenOffice is an open source product and more importantly its free for you to download from the website and use. This is the most well known open source application suite and is generally compatible with MS Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .mdb). For those of you with Macs, don’t feel left out. OpenOffice is a multiplatform application (it runs on lots of operating systems). Also, NeoOffice offers an open source alternative to MS Office for the Mac. Again its totally free and is supposed to be compatible with Office formats. If you’re strapped for cash and in need of an Office compatible suite of tools to do your homework, this might be the time to checkout open source software.

Now the big question: “Dr. B” how do these programs work?” I haven’t used either one. NeoOffice was featured in a list of free software in a recent issue of MacAddict and the comments were pretty promising. I intend to get a copy for my Mac and check it out. As far as OpenOffice, this is where I’m going to get you involved. If you’ve used OpenOffice, or NeoOffice for that matter, leave a comment telling everyone about how they worked. The $150 (academic price for MS Office) you save, could be your own.

Well, thats what I know, and now you know.

Dr. B

CIS@ULM Moving?

Hello and welcome to what will probably be the new home of CIS@ULM. If you never read the old blog that was hosted on Blogger, well then you won’t really notice anything. I’ve included a link to our old blog in the BlogRoll section on this page so you can see what we’ve been doing. If this move becomes permanent, that older blog will go away.

By way of introduction to those that are just finding out about this blog, this is the quasi-official online home for the Computer Information Systems program. Sort of unofficial official site so to speak. I and the other CIS faculty will be posting information here that pertains to the goings on in our program, the industry, and items to help/inform our students. We’re doing this to provide a place, even virtually, for all of us to rally around in the absense of a department and department office.

I’ve provided some backgound on this blog and listed the rules that we’ll be following. Hopefully, this will provide a way for all of us to come together as a discipline or major. As things progress, we may move this blog on campus, or we may not. I do want this to be “our” space, so comments and suggestions are welcome.

Enjoy and Welcome Back

Dr. Barnett